Wow, when was the last time I updated this blog? Turns out it was November 2020!
That’s a long time! Especially since I used to post here pretty regularly before moving to America. Two years is a stretch, to be honest. Am I going to get back to regular posting? I’d like to. But no promises.
Making Music Again
The short answer: I moved to Los Angeles, and LA has a way of pulling you back into music whether you planned it or not.
The longer answer: after years of working about music — as a consultant, researcher, speaker, and writer — I missed actually making it. There’s a fundamental difference between analyzing music and creating it. Both are valuable. But they feed different parts of you.
In 2021, I started experimenting again. Nothing planned. No concept, no goal, no audience in mind. Just playing around with sounds, recording on my phone or laptop, seeing what happened. It felt good. It felt like reclaiming something.
What Changed
Living in America changed my relationship to music in ways I didn’t expect. Here, music is everywhere — not just as background noise, but as active culture. People go to shows constantly. Musicians are everywhere. The infrastructure for making and sharing music is more accessible than anywhere I’ve lived before.
I also found myself listening differently. More widely. More curiously. Genre boundaries that felt real in Indonesia started feeling arbitrary.
What’s Next
I’m not trying to build an artist career. I’m too old and too realistic for that. But I do want to keep making things — songs, sounds, experiments — and occasionally share them. This blog feels like the right place to document that process.
More soon. Hopefully.